Stage Fright

Stage Fright is a single player rhythm and horror game where you take the role of a piano prodigy who is overwhelmed by musical performance anxiety. This anxiety manifests itself as a supernatural ghost girl, the mysterious HANNAH, who haunts your concerts to strain your ability and sanity.

The game is played a Guitar-Hero-style beatmatching mechanic that will coax you to perform at your best! But BEWARE - you will unravel horrific past trauma...

Jump scares, unsettling visual elements, and even UI breakdowns are in store as the
the game itself tries to prevent you from succeeding!

I remember playing the early builds of this game and while I'm no better at using both of my hands in a rythm horror game, but I love the game even more now anyway! I haven't beaten story mode yet, but I'm practicing. I never was good on the piano.

Hi, I just bought the game and I found there's quite a few issues when playing through the Story Mode - I've tried re-installing the game multiple times now to no avail. Whenever I play, it will randomly count pressed notes as missed ones. As well, the game always seems to crash two songs after the Finale. Also, I'm not sure if the game is intentionally randomized, but the two times I tried to open Story Mode the openings were completely different. One of them had a proper opening with the CG and voice acting, while the other threw me straight into the gameplay and had a different jumpscare than the other.

I do love the game and it's concept, so I was wondering if there's anything I can do to fix this on my end, or if it's an issue with the game as a whole?

Hello! So the input missed bug is something I'm actively working on, reported on the first day, and should have a fix really soon. I will let you know when it's out - is it all right for me to give you an updated build via the email registered to your payment?

I haven't seen those other bugs yet (the beginning is intentionally randomized, but shouldn't be to that degree). I'll get on that ASAP.

Thanks for your comment, and for your support! Apologies for the bugs.

I love the concept, and I'm excited that someone's willing to make something like this. However, I've played games like these (minus the horror part) for years now, and I have some comments to make on that aspect of the game.

The slow speed at which the notes go down the screen is a good base setting, but it can be hard to tell (especially when playing on both fields of play at once) when each note will be hit at a more precise measure. I feel that these things can be fixed with one of two options (although I personally would suggest both);

You can 1) Allow people to change the rate at which the notes go down (as I've found that as I played this game more, I've slowly began to find how slow it is difficult to play- very notably so with the more complex rhythms- and giving the ability to make the speed faster (and maybe even a little slower, I don't know) might make it more natural to play so people can focus on the aesthetics rather than trying to figure out which note goes where in real time. Although, to be fair, this is more of a general suggestion than anything else.

And 2) make the ticks on the sides of each of the rows of columns A) maybe a little more visible but mostly B) coordinate each side of them. At the moment they're off sync with each other, making one or both out of sync with the song itself. Although I can see why A might not be something you would want to add, I feel fixing B) could be a big help in letting players more smoothly play the game... so that they can get more scared. It's a win-win!

Another thing I've noticed is the alignment of each of the columns. Namely, that they're angled differently from each other. I don't think this would be much of a problem if they weren't angled away from each other - which also seems to be (in a way that hurts in terms of consistency) different in other stages/circumstances. Giving it a dynamic angle makes it look nicer, but maybe angle it differently...

Similarly, one of the frustrations I've had with this game is how far apart each row of columns is. But that's fine, it does well with fitting to how you can't see both of your hands so well when they're on different areas of the piano anyways. That was just something I'm mentioning on the side....... although maybe they could be a little closer together... or have the notes not come on the screen from horizontally opposite ends of the screen.

I really like this concept and I hope it does well, so keep up the good work(and sorry for the long comment)!

No worries for the long comment, thanks for the feedback! I'll respond to your list one by one.

1. We have no plans to allow players to change the note speed, as that's tied directly to the music playing and depends on its tempo. I think your other suggestions kind of tie into the problem you suggest (that it's hard to read the note timings), and we've been looking at ways to solve that issue.

2. Agreed on the ticks, we will make them coordinated and more visible.

3. After a year of testing we're unfortunately going to keep the columns the same. They're angled that way precisely because it makes the game more difficult, and gives an easy way to differentiate between our game and other rhythm games while also matching the background art.

This past year has been crazy, and all of the team hasn't had as much time to work on the game as we would like. But we're still grinding away, and hope to have it out by December this year. I'll update this page as soon as we have more to show!

EXCELLENT indie horror title. I really never comment on these and instead, let my video reviews do the talking for me, but goddamn, I had a lot of fun with this one. I'm very excited to see the full version (if there will be one) and what else you'll develop in the future! Kudos!

If anyone would like to watch my Let's Play as well, here it is. The bass response got a little f*cked up, but that was my editing software, not the game itself:

While I mostly play horror games and leave the rhythm well alone, I was intrigued by this game. I've recorded a video for my YouTube channel though at time of writing this comment it's still rendering. However I found this game wonderfully unique and brilliant.

If you're interested in testing, I played the game for my channel on my Windows gaming rig which, with 32GB RAM, Intel i5-3470, GTX 970 and running off an SSD you can expect it ran flawlessy on its maximum graphics settings. I also have a iMac 7,1 (20" mid 2007 model) which I use to render my videos with. After reading other comments I tried the Mac version as well. I have upgraded the iMac's RAM to 4GB and its HDD to 2TB (still a mechanical HDD, not SSD) and for the most part it also ran smoothly, Averaging around 20fps at the iMac's standard 1,680 x 1,050 display during normal gameplay but when the visuals kicked in showing the horror part, and the girl flashing on screen, I noticed a marked drop in fps to around 10fps. So for those with an older machine of around 2007 or earlier I'd recommend the "Good" quality settings or lower for smooth gameplay.

I haven't tested it on an older desktop PC mind you as I don't have one, but I also tested this on my Acer Aspire E51 laptop which also only has an Intel Core 2 Duo, 4GB RAM and Intel HD graphics, but even at maximum quality it runs very smoothly all the way through. So I gotta say yes this is a very good game to play even on older machines.

If you want to see my playthrough (be aware I'm crap at rhythm games) it'll take the Mac around 10 hours to render with another 3 hours to upload, so I will be releasing it on Monday 4pm PST/7pm EST as part of my scheduled release time for videos.

Hi, further update. Since last playing I've upgrade the iMac from an Intel Core 2 Duo 2.0Ghz to an Intel Extreme Core 2 Duo 2.8 (model X7900 to be exact) which is the fastest, most modern CPU the iMac 7,1 can support, and I ran you game again on max settings. Flawless. No fps dip even during the horror glitches later in songs. So I feel the game is more CPU intensive than GPU.

Just thought to let you know if in case in future updates you want to put in system requirements. :)

I'm usually not into horror games at all, but I love rhythm games and am enjoying this one very much. But there's a bug I have in the windows version. Those bars that the notes slide down don't appear. It makes it difficult to differentiate the black notes and I have to play entirely by ear since the hit bar at the bottom isn't there either. Is this a bug in the file itself or just something wrong with my computer or version?

Went through it again and still don't see it. Have a feeling I know the problem though. I'm running an older computer so it's specs aren't as up to the times as others. Tested the game on another, better, computer in the house and it worked just fine, so it's definitely my computer.

Here are the specs on it. If you can't do anything, don't worry. The computer I'm on is a temporary one anyway. I'm getting a new one in a little under a month and have others in the house I'm sure I could borrow if I get impatient. Besides, the rest of the game works and I still love it.

Hello, the mac version comes as a folder with no way of launching the game. I tried to run the "Stagefright_v.06" inside [Stage Fright Mac Build/Contents/MacOS] But it told me that there were no programs that could open it.

Thanks! I really enjoyed playing, it's a great game so far. I noticed a bug where it doesn't let you get 100% on the Rehearsal. And at times, the notes are so close together and the "hit" box is so large, it feels like the song is playing itself. It'd be cool if there were special notes that had a shorter hit box so they could be placed closer together without removing the immersion, but that's just my two cents. With the exception of those two nitpicks, the game plays very well. Awesome work, hope to see a full version in the future!

thank you :D I currently don't have a laptop or computer with windows or Mac, and cannot afford to buy one, so if you made a port for Linux, I'd be able to play! and this look so cool and fun to play from what I've seen! thanks, also, for taking time to read and reply to my comment